Why Can’t We Just Say It? It is Fascism.
On Tuesday, October 15th Vice President Kamala Harris was interviewed by Charlamagne tha God (Lenard Larry McKelvey) on the radio show The Breakfast Club. Harris was explaining the two different visions of the presidential campaigns using the now familiar explanation that “one is about going backwards, ours is about going forward.” Charlamagne challenged her with a question, “Why can’t we just say it, one is about fascism?” Harris replied, ‘Yeah, we can say that.”
Finally! Two weeks before the election, and we can say it.
(Photo: Larry Froeber / Getty Images)
Nazi salute by Friends of New Germany at Madison Square Garden. On February 20, 1939 20,000 Nazi leaning Americans gathered in Manhattan to show their support for Hitler and the Nazi movement.
Did You Know:
The power of Charlamagne’s question was that it came from a citizen, not a politician. Charlamagne wasn’t doing a softball interview in front of Harris’ adoring fans; the radio audience were millennial black men. He was challenging her on her prosecutorial record, the concern that she sounds ‘scripted’ and her support for the real-life concerns of young black men. It felt like a ‘let’s just get real’ kind of question. It’s a question that our team at H4D has been asking ourselves for almost two years.
It's time that we say out loud that MAGA extremism has devolved into fascism. Is it serendipitous that we learned in the same week of the Charlamagne interview that former Joint Chiefs of Staff and retired Gen. Mark MIlley told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump is a fascist to his core?
Think about it. A millennial black man and a retired army general saying that Trump is a fascist. One says it out loud in the moment to millions of listeners, the other says it to an author years after he knew it was true. We need to hear them. That truth needs to live in our consciousness as voters. We must be clear-eyed about what is at stake. There can be no sitting this one out because we just don’t know what to believe. If we don’t know what to believe, that’s on us!
In Fascist regimes, gaslighting is the primary weapon of distraction. MAGA politicians are using words like ‘fascists, socialists, radicals, communists, vermin, evil, anti-democratic, lunatics, radical liberals, and deep state. Trump has doubled down on his rhetoric that his political adversaries are the ‘enemy from within’ who deserve his retribution and use of military force against them. Many have become numb to his threats and MAGA name calling. Terms like authoritarians, fascists and dictators lose their potency, meaning, and relevance. And of course, that is the point.
Authoritarian experts and historians have been sounding the alarm since at least 2016. In President Biden’s State of the Union Address on March 7, 2024, he too warned Congress and the American people that were facing a serious threat to our democracy:
Now, it’s we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the union. And yes, my purpose tonight is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either. Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today.”
Our H4D team has been writing about authoritarianism and MAGA extremism within our own state. We launched H4D to help grow an anti-extremism, pro-democracy movement in Indiana in anticipation of this election.
It is our experience that mainstream media and many non-partisan civic organizations are resistant to calling out MAGA candidates, regardless of how extreme and anti-democratic they are. It has taken a while for our collective sensibilities to understand that democracy is not a partisan issue. The result is that extremism becomes normalized and sanitized. False Equivalencies between the parties is the standard. Sane-washing keeps the campaigns on equal ground. Charlamagne is not having it.
The dilemma is that when both parties say that the other one is ‘fascist’ citizens must be able to discern who is telling the truth. One party is sounding an alarm, the other is gaslighting. It’s time the media, our faith leaders, civic organizations and non MAGA folk face the unbelievable. We have one presidential candidate who is a fascist and could become the next President of the United States. His name is Donald Trump, and he has a cult following of citizens and elected officials.
Why It Matters:
Distracted from distraction by distraction keeps us sleepwalking into the abyss. It is easy to become overwhelmed, distracted, exhausted, confused and broken-hearted by politics and the political process. However, as citizens of a democracy, we cannot afford the luxury of distraction nor being broken hearted. These feelings must be our call to action.
While our national politics is awash with the threat of fascism, Indiana is a microcosm of that threat.
Mike Braun, the Republican candidate for Governor, is a Trump supporter and MAGA acolyte.
Micah Beckwith is a self-proclaimed White Christian Nationalist, which is another form of white supremacy and fascism. Beckwith most recently said that immigrants should be preemptively deported in an interview on Ft. Wayne’s WOWO radio station.
Jim Banks, the Republican Candidate for U.S. Senate, led the Republican Study Committee in Congress, a conservative caucus that proposed an ‘alt budget’ to divert funds to the military, build a border wall and protect Americans from the radical woke agenda. This language is a part of Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s second term.
Todd Rokita, the Republican candidate for Attorney General is a MAGA extremist and continually repeats Russian propaganda of the 'big lie'. He has weaponized the office of Attorney General in his frivolous and vindictive lawsuits, most of which have been shut down by the Indiana Supreme Court. He has also been reprimanded by the Indiana Supreme Court.
Victoria Spartz is running for Indiana’s 5th Congressional District. She is an election denier and spreads the ‘big lie’ propaganda. She compares the FBI to the KGB and is facing a House Ethics Committee investigation for harassment and bullying of her staff. She is against LGBTQ+ rights and has been accused of directing her harassment and bullying against LGBTQ+ staff. She is a MAGA extremist.
These Indiana candidates are aligned with Trump’s agenda of fascism. Regardless of who wins the national election, if these candidates are elected, Indiana will continue its experimentation with extremism and fascism.
What You Can Do:
A refugee who escaped Austria during World War II said that “democracy is not a spectator sport.” Her name was Lotte Scharfman and she was just 10 years old when she immigrated to America. One can assume that Lotte understood the dangers of fascism and the promise of democracies. In 2024, we must heed Lotte’s warning.
Use the next few days between now and November 5th to be sure none of us are mere spectators to our beloved democracy:
Vote for Democratic candidates, up and down the ballot. In 2024, a vote for a democrat doesn’t mean you are a democrat, it means you are voting country over party.
Vote early! Download and share this clickable map widely with family and friends, community organizations, college and university GOTV contacts, etc.
Be a relational outreach voter. Talk to friends, family, colleagues and neighbors about what is at stake in this election. It’s really just ‘friend to friend’ organizing.
Take 10 minutes to watch this short explanation on relational organizing and sign up to rally your squad developed by Red, Wine & Blue (RWB). It’s simple, effective and FUN!
Vote the full ballot and encourage others to do so! Do your homework ahead of time so you will know who is on the ballot including the down ballot options for retaining judges, local school boards and other municipal seats. For information about who and what are on your ballot, see Vote 411 by the League of Women Voters and/or MADVoters Ballot Buddy
For information on the constitutional amendment, and Indiana Supreme Court justices and Indiana Court of Appeal judges on the ballot, see H4D previous post
Let’s end the GOP supermajority and flip as many house and senate seats as possible. For more information on some of the candidates for the Statehouse, see Indiana House Districts.
An additional house district to the ones listed above includes Stephanie Jo Yocum for HD88. Stephanie’s district covers three counties northeast of Indianapolis and is a partisan gerrymandered district to favor GOP candidates.
Joel Levi is running for State Senate in SD20. This district includes parts of Carmel and Noblesville and if elected he would help reduce the Senate’s supermajority and under-representation of urban and suburban Hoosiers.
Katrina Owens is running for State Senate SD32. This is a partisan gerrymandered district that dilutes urban/suburban representation for Hoosiers living in Marion County. Partisan gerrymandering fractures ‘communities of interest’ so their collective voices are minimized if not lost entirely.
Share this newsletter with everyone you know and help us grow this movement.
Joyfully yours in democracy.
Debbie, Rachel, Kathy, Dona & Barbara
Notes:
For more information on fascism in America see https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/fascism-comes-to-america-bruce-kuklick/ and
For more information about the pro-Nazi rally in 1939 see https://newspapers.ushmm.org/events/american-nazis-rally-in-new-york-city
For a six minute, easy to understand review of what fascism is, see Timothy Snyder's video explanation of fascism in America and Ruth Ben Ghiat’s essay on fascism
For more information on the Harris interview with Charlamagne, see https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/15/politics/kamala-harris-charlamagne-tha-god/index.html and https://www.npr.org/2024/10/15/nx-s1-5154119/kamala-harris-charlamagne-tha-god-black-voters
For more information on fascism and gaslighting see https://link.motherjones.com/public/28967589
For more information of Hitler’s tactic of the ‘big lie’, see https://icejusa.org/2024/01/10/hitlers-big-lie-technique/
For more information about the use of false equivalencies in journalism and how we can all avoid them see this short video https://indiana.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/above-the-noise-false-equivalence/above-the-noise-false-equivalence/
For more information on the impact of Christian Nationalism on our democracy see https://www.badfaithdocumentary.com/